Old Master, 19th-Century Works Take $10M at Sotheby’s Paris

Sotheby’s sales of ¬19th-century paintings and drawings and Old Master paintings and drawings in Paris on June 25 brought a combined total of E6.5 million ($10.1 million).

NEW YORK—Sotheby’s sales of 19th-century paintings and drawings and Old Master paintings and drawings in Paris on June 25 brought a combined total of €6.5 million ($10.1 million).

Nineteenth-century art realized €2.5 million ($3.9 million) for 146 lots offered. Of these, 86, or 59 percent, were sold. The top lot was La Corinthe, circa 1903–4, a polychrome plaster and wax seated portrait figure by Jean-Léon Gérôme (estimate: €200,000/300,000). It was consigned by the artist’s descendants and sold to the Musée d’Orsay for €456,750 or $710,936.

The Gérôme was followed by Franz Xaver Winterhalter’s Portrait of Baronne Henri Hottinguer, circa 1851, which sold for €312,750 ($486,800), far past the €150,000/200,000 estimate. A second Winterhalter portrait, Madame François-Marie Delessert, 1851, was also among the top lots, earning €90,750 ($141,253) on an estimate of €50,000/80,000. A landscape by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Fontainebleau: Pine and Birch Trees in the Rocks, circa 1840–45 (estimate: €80,000/120,000), sold for €168,750 ($262,661).

The Old Master sale realized €3.97 million ($6.2 million) for 114 lots offered. Of these, 69, or 61 percent, were sold. By value, the auction was 81 percent sold. Sotheby’s noted an international mix of buyers from France, Italy, England and the U.S.

The top lot was Portrait of Baron François de Chambrier, Chamberlain to the King of Prussia, 1771, by Pompeo Batoni (1708–1787), which brought €660,750 ($1 million), a record for the artist (estimate: €400,000/600,000).

A 1768 painting of a shipwreck by Claude-Joseph Vernet (1714–1789), estimated at €250,000/350,000, sold for €288,750 ($449,442), and a 1728 oil by Jean-Baptiste Oudry, Louis XV Keeping a Bloodhound on the Leash, sold for €216,750 ($337,374) to the Musée National du Château de Compiègne (estimate: €120,000/150,000).